


A Return

by KipRussel



Series: faden in (or: how i learned to cry about dylan a lot) [4]
Category: Alan Wake (Video Game), Control (Video Game)
Genre: AWE spoilers, Dylan doesn't understand how Alan's writing "power" works, Dylan's little brother energy is high, Gen, alan cannot spell maintenance and neither can i, because neither of these men are thinking clearly due to circumstance, dylan and alan have a lot in common which is good! also not, hazy foggy minds and thoughts, mentions of Alan Wake: American Nightmare, mentions of the Hiss, only child Alan can only do so much, powers intervening before things get messy, weird dream like logic but probably not THAT weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 16:34:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30075114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KipRussel/pseuds/KipRussel
Summary: “You’re getting deeper. And deeper and deeper and deeper. The current pulled me here. In the lake.”“The la…you were at the lake?”Alan asks urgently, pulling himself to his feet with the crooked chair. “You dove into the lake?”“No!” Dylan clarifies with some offense, then hesitates. “Yes. I… it was the lighthouse. And the lake. Below the lighthouse. But… I don’t know. I can’t tell real life from dreaming anymore. Or dreams from… dreams.”
Relationships: Dylan Faden & Alan Wake
Series: faden in (or: how i learned to cry about dylan a lot) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2089236
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	A Return

** I stared into the lake reflections too long. My vision became distorted, fragmented; like my memories, like my writing. But my goal remained unchanged and unshaken. Like a lighthouse cutting through the dark of night, illuminating the truth. **

** For every detail I lost in my memory, left to the pages behind me, a new one became concrete and certain on the newer pages. Alice returning to the Bureau. Hartman’s reaction to her presence. For every new step of the journey, every new piece of the puzzle I sorted, a new would slide into place. Sometimes the new information meant reworks-- routine maitenence to make sure the story still worked. **

** I tweaked the outline in my mind; getting experimental, finding new ways to work in the weird and unusual, in ways the Darkness couldn’t claim. **

** The Darkness pulled me deeper. My lungs burned with the pressure and weight of the water, begging for air. The manuscript was my lifeline, my tether to the surface. **

Alan types feverishly, fingers hardly fast enough to keep up with his thoughts, story flowing freely. He desperately tries to cling to every word and thought, bottle all of it as it gushes forward and vanishes into the dark, getting it all down on paper before it disappears. He clings to his fleeting lucidity with every keystroke. The cadence keeps him enraptured with the story; a hypnotic rhythm. _Tik-tik-tiktiktiktik, ding. Tik-tik-tiktiktiktik._

“Maintenance is spelled wrong,” Dylan says over his shoulder.

Alan gasps, flinching away reflexively, sliding out of his chair with a clumsy _thud_. He sees Dylan still peering down at him and squeezes his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“My bad,” Dylan says in a way that sounds less like an apology and more like the punchline to a joke.

“You came back,” Alan winces, trying to avoid a variety of swears that all say _you just scared the daylights out of me_. He cringes internally at his own accidental pun. “A little bit of warning would be nice.”

“My bad,” he repeats, quieter this time, picking at his nails. “It was different this time. I had to dive. To find you.”

Alan’s eyes snap back open at that. He takes in the man in front of him — Dylan is still dressed in the clinical grey sweater and sweats. His hair looks like it might be longer. It’s to the point now that it looks just a bit unkempt — like he’s been in a rush, and hadn’t taken the time to smooth it out. His eyes are still alert and nervous beneath the glassy look trying to overtake him. He’s been fighting to keep aware in the Darkness. Or somewhere else. He has the dark circles under his eyes to prove it, standing out prominently against how pale he is. A beard is starting to grow. He pulls one sleeve down over his hand and digs his nails into it.

“You’re getting deeper. And deeper and deeper and deeper. The current pulled me here. In the lake.”

“The la… _you were at the lake?_ ” he asks urgently, pulling himself to his feet with the crooked chair. “You dove into the lake?”

“No!” Dylan clarifies with some offense, then hesitates. “Yes. I… it was the lighthouse. And the lake. Below the lighthouse. But… I don’t know. I can’t tell real life from dreaming anymore. Or dreams from… dreams.”

Alan eyes him warily. Dylan avoids his gaze.

“And you dove in? Why not just stay at the lighthouse?”

“You spelled maintenance wrong,” he repeats, pointing accusatively toward the typewriter.

Alan leans in and squints in the dim light at the page. _Maitenence._

“It’s just a rough draft,” he says, mostly trying to convince himself. He takes a seat, pushing the paper back to his mistake, covering it over with the X key. _Tiktiktiktiktiktik._ “I’ll fix it later.”

“It’s _M-A-I-N-T_ —”

“I got it, thanks,” Alan holds up a hand, unsure how to respond, because he’s not sure if Dylan’s trying to genuinely be helpful or still trying to annoy him.

“Are you still writing your book? Your escape?” he asks. Alan hums a response somewhere between _yes, I guess,_ and _I wouldn't still be here writing an escape if I managed to escape_. “Will I find your book, if you make it out? And I come back? Can I read it?”

He’s always asking questions that Alan never even considered before. Which is good, he supposes. It helps keep him grounded. Thinking… not clearer, but differently. Thinking outside of the one path he’s dug, the single-minded, one-thought-driven trench he’s pushing through toward the goal. Dylan asks him questions that make him stop and reconsider his plan. In a good way. Usually. 

Granted, this is only the second time Dylan has been here. He’s still not entirely sure if Dylan is real. He might be some odd, subconscious creation of his own here to…help him? Annoy him? Both? He’s fairly certain Dylan isn’t some trick of the Darkness, though certainty down here isn’t typically a safe stance to take.

Regardless, Dylan is here.

It’s nice to not be alone in the depths. He hopes it isn’t a false and hollow feeling.

Daring to hope in such a dark place brings light.

“I don’t know what will happen to it once I’m out.” He says it like a promise to himself. _Once I’m out. Once I’m out._ No “ifs”. He pulls the chair back out and takes his seat again, fixing the paper, re-reading where he left off. Dylan interrupted the rhythm. But it’s not too bad. He catches errors as he reads back, adjusting the plan in his mind, hovering his fingers over the keys.

Dylan stands over his shoulder and watches.

Alan turns around to give him a look.

He stares back, like he might win whatever this game is, before conceding and wandering off around the room. Alan returns to typing, slower this time. It’s hard to work when someone else is in your space.

“Can you write me into your story?” Dylan asks, shuffling around the room. He presses his hand against the wall, feeling the old woodgrain, cold from the shifting water and Darkness outside.

“I… don’t know,” Alan answers truthfully. He has no idea who Dylan is or where he came from. Figment, tool of the Darkness, something new entirely. Best to not make promises you can’t keep when it comes to creating a final product. 

That worming, itching feeling comes back to Alan, in the back of his mind. The idea that he knows Dylan, somehow. That there’s a connection somewhere. Is it Hartman? His own works? Zane’s? _Zane. I almost forgot Zane._

Dylan kicks some discarded papers, watching them flutter a foot off the ground and scatter across the floor. They’re covered in scratched out words and rambling paragraphs. Some look less coherent than others. Some just look like someone emptied a dictionary out of order onto the page.

“I used to think I lived in a story,” he says weakly, a smile ghosting across his face. “Because my town had a storybook name. And my sister and I would do storybook things; go on adventures in the forest, or the… junkyard…”

He trails, expression darkening. Alan’s typewriter fills the silence, _click click click click._

“I don’t really know if I want to be in a book anymore,” Dylan mumbles.

Alan stops typing. The sentence burns through him and nestles into his chest. _I don’t really know if I want to be in a book anymore._ _I don’t really know if I want to be writing a book anymore._ Writing his book. Where he’s the main character. Was the main character.

Ten years.

Writing. Always writing. Always running.

Neither of them move, for a moment. Eventually, the sound of tentative typing returns. _Click. Click. Click click click._ Alan hears Dylan shuffle through the papers again. He digs for the right words to start his next sentence, then picks up speed. _Tiktiktiktiktiktik._

He can’t deny how… how _lucid_ it helps him feel, to have another… _someone_ , here with him in the cabin. He can’t help but feel some sort of connection with him. Maybe because of the nature of how they met. Maybe because he invented him and forgot. Maybe it’s the underlying sense that they’ve been walking similar paths.

The Dark Place gives him twisted glimpses of things he wouldn’t normally know. Things he uses to work into the narrative to write his way out of here. Things the Darkness tries to use to write its way out. 

He doesn’t know who Dylan is. But he can _feel_ him.

Different parallel circumstances. Sleeping while wide awake. Pushing through the haze. The underlying, bubbling anger they both fight to control, to use in its proper place. Fighting to keep their minds. Trying to discern what thoughts are their own, and what are works of outer forces trying to bend their will.

Dylan’s never said it. Neither has Alan.

But they know. It’s an instant recognition. Resonating with one another.

Alan can’t help but feel a bit protective of him, for some reason. It’s not something he’s used to. Alice, Barry, of course— but this kind of instinct for a stranger? He’d prefer to keep to himself. Stay guarded, on defense. And yet…

This is a different kind of protectiveness. A reserved kind. A kind that almost feels like looking in a mirror, or looking back at his younger self. 

Dylan isn’t much like him, but the ways that he is stand out in capital letters in ways Alan can’t ignore.

He doesn’t know if he can trust him, but he feels like he’s been cut from the same cloth. If he can at least advise him on how to stay safe from the Darkness, he can rest in that. Learn from his mistakes. Teach him how to keep his grip, keep his head on straight, keep thoughts captive, discern friend from foe. Or at least just discern foe.

 _I feel… this feels familiar,_ Alan thinks, and even the thought itself amplifies the deja vu enveloping his mind. His eyes flit to Dylan as he leaves his peripheral vision. _Who are you? Do I know you?_ The uncertainty settles uncomfortably underneath his thoughts.

Dylan runs his fingers around the sealed threshold of the door at the other end of the room, then lets his eyes roam the bookshelf against the wall. It’s dusty and empty— making it seem bigger than it is, taking up empty space only to provide more empty space. There’s clean spaces on it where it looks like something _had_ been, but since moved. Overall, largely boring. He drops into a squat and tilts his head, scanning the lower shelf. It’s piled with fresh paper, stacked neatly for the most part, except at the top. He flips through them with his thumb a few times, until Alan turns and gives him a look for the noise.

Next to the paper is an old, beat up shoebox, free of any labels at all. It’s also suspiciously dust-free. Dylan pulls it out with one hand, using his free one to grab a shelf and hoist himself back up. Something light rattles loosely inside. He nestles the lid of the box onto the bottom, revealing a mess of torn paper strips. He picks them up in handfuls and lets them fall back in, ruffling through them. Alan stops typing again, turning to watch him with some well-meaning annoyance. Dylan gives the box a few shakes, like he’s about to pluck a winning ticket in a raffle. 

Seeing him stand there with the shoebox in hand brings something to the front of Alan’s dark-hazed mind. A sinking feeling settles in his stomach, turning his veins into ice. 

Dylan. Dylan Faden. 

Faden. His grip tightens on the back of the chair.

Alan only knew snippets of what happened with the Hiss. He saw it through murky glass, how it swarmed through the Bureau, how it claimed The-Thing-That-Had-Been-Hartman, how Jesse and her guiding star fought against it. How it moved, how it thought, how it wanted nothing but more. He only ever saw glimpses of her brother. He wasn’t exactly relevant to his own story.

But now he’s standing here in the cabin, holding the puzzle pieces of the Hiss incantation.

_What sent him here? How did he get here? Why?_

Alan knows how to sense when a fight is about to start. His hair stands on end.

“Hey, how do you spell maintenance again?” Alan asks, trying to sound casual, trying to will Dylan away from the box, trying to channel his writing into word. _Set it down. Don’t read any of it._

“I thought it was just a rough draft,” Dylan smirks, picking out one of the pieces of paper and pinching it between his fingers. He unrolls it with his thumb, squinting at the smudged ink. “It’s M-A-I…”

He trails, shifting further into the light, trying to make out the words on the paper.

_Orange peel._

He shudders, rolling his neck and shoulders. Not here. It can’t be here. It can’t get to him here. Can it? This is just coincidence. He drops it back into the pile.

“M-A…” he pulls out another and unfurls it. _Repeat the word_. “M… A… hey, wh… what is this?”

Alan steels himself, mind racing.

_You must want these waves to drag you away. An earworm is a tune you can’t stop humming in a dream. You are home._

“It’s just an experiment. Part of the story. I was… trying something new.” How can he lessen this blow? How can he explain himself in a way that doesn’t cover him in guilt? Paint him entirely in red?

Dylan grows quiet. He reads another, and another.

“I… I needed a way to connect the Bureau—”

“You did this?” It’s a whisper. A dawning realization. Awe and terror, all laced into three words. It mutates into anger in a breath. “ _You_ did this?” His fingers tighten around the box, crumpling the edges in. Alan holds his hands out innocently.

“Dylan, you have to listen to me—”

“You did this to me? Did you do the rest, too? How much of it? _All_ of it?”

“No, I—”

 _“Shut up!”_ His shout pierces through the silence of the small room. Everything hangs in suspension for a moment. Outside, the darkness swirls and howls, making the dim lights flicker. “Did you even care? Did you even _think_ about what it might be like?”

“I didn’t write your life!” Alan shouts over him, trying to get through to him. “I don’t even know you. I didn’t write you. I can’t just do that.”

“ _Liar_ ,” Dylan spits. The darkness rattles the windows, screaming against the light.

 _“Listen to me!”_ Alan stresses, clenching his fists. “I just— I gave it the words. Look, I don’t know why I’m connected to the Bureau, but I _am,_ and I’m going to use whatever I can to get out.”

“Like me?” Dylan lunges forward a step.

“That’s not what I meant!” Alan launches to his feet, pushing the chair back with force. “That’s not how it works!” Both men start to move toward each other, tension thick in the air, until the darkness cuts through the room. The force flings them back, sending Dylan tumbling over backward and launching Alan back into his desk, back folding unnaturally against the edge.

Dylan hits the ground with a resounding thud, knocking the air from his lungs, knocking his head against the dirt. He squeezes his eyes shut against the pain, fighting to get his breath back, still blinded by the pain and anger. It takes awhile for the ringing in his ears to die down, leaving him space to finally think, and to realize he is no longer where he was.

The cool night air is deceitfully stale and terribly quiet.

The grit and sand shifts into the snaking cracks in the ground.

A night sky he doesn’t recognize sprawls above him. A satellite drifts past.

He props himself up on his elbows, dust falling out of his hair. Instead of the cabin, the desk, and the writer lying ahead of him, he sees only desert sky and a distant flickering neon sign.

* * *

Alan writhes, crumpling to the floor, knees hitting carpet hard, the jolt of pain reminding him of his age. Something in his head is screaming at him to put up his arms to block any incoming blow, but he can’t find the strength to do it. Had Dylan pushed him? What happened? He digs his nails into the stubbled carpet, taking a shuddering breath, gritting his teeth against the pain.

 _“Look,”_ he winces, sounding far more pained than assertive like he planned. But when he rocks back, he finds the room empty.

He blinks, scanning the darkness for Dylan. Did he fall back too? Did the darkness take him?

It takes a moment to realize he’s no longer in the cabin. In fact, he can’t remember if he was ever in the cabin to begin with. It’s like… waking up from a dream. Confusing the dream with waking hours. The cabin is just a dream, isn’t it? It vanishes deeper into his thoughts. 

Hasn’t he always been here? Where _is_ here? It all feels so familiar— the carpet, the wallpaper, the bed, the paintings on the walls. It feels like it was manufactured, like it was mass produced. Like something liminal, achingly familiar and absolutely mundane.

He rubs the back of his head, squinting in the dark, and realizes he’s in the motel.

 _The_ Motel. Splitting hallways and dull carpet and midnight light and tv static. It splits his head and thoughts in two, trying to remember this place. Everywhere and nowhere. Familiar and foreign. Hallways that never end, going on and and on, ever deeper. A maze. A current pushing him deeper into the depths. Abyssal. Hungry. A creature. Like the desert. Like Washington. Like...

Hasn’t he always been here? Temporary lodgings, no cockroach problems, the indefinite middle ground from _here_ to _there._ He chose to stay here, right? Didn’t he?

The typewriter is sitting on a desk in the room. A painting of an infinite spiral, darker and darker still, sits above it. There’s a glass of scotch waiting for him on a coaster, still cold to the touch.

The cabin is so distant, hardly even a memory. A foggy concept that lashes out at him painfully before vanishing back into the darkness.

Where’s… the person he was just with? Shouldn’t he be here too? A friend, right? A collaborator. Helping him edit. Guiding him. Wasn’t he just here?

What was his name?

It’s on the tip of his tongue. But fading.

Tom? Wasn’t it Tom?

Tom will help.

Best to get writing in the meantime. No point in waiting. He’s already done so much waiting.

Alan pulls out the cheap wooden chair and slides into it, wrapping his fingers around the glass. The spiral painting looms and makes his vision sway.

_Kippis._

He takes the drink in one gulp, sputtering and coughing at the surprising strength. It tastes like…

His head swims and thrums. Deeper, deeper, deeper. _Dive so deep you loop around and come back out the other side. A return._

The painting in front of him stretches on forever.

His fingers brush across the keys. _Tiktiktiktiktiktik._ A hypnotic rhythm. So easy to lose himself in. _Tiktiktiktiktik._

It’s so hard to think. It’s so hard to process. It’s so much easier to just focus on the typewriter and think of nothing else. Anything else feels like being pulled too thin, like being stretched beyond comprehension. 

The rhythm of the keys isn’t comfort. But it is a promise. A tool to wield.

_Dive deeper to the other side, and pull yourself out._

* * *

Dylan has too many nightmares where he’s running from something.

The Hiss is always chasing him.

Not always. But with the way it feels lately, it might as well be. It’s in the distance, on the horizon of the desert. The edge of the night sky. A warping red sandstorm, spanning east and west. A growth. A ravaging fire. A parasite. He can see it getting closer, even so far off in the distance.

It’s why he dove into the lake to see Alan. He found himself in an unfamiliar forest, some coastal road. Through the dream logic, he knew the Lighthouse was the last safe place to be. He huddled up toward the light, watching the beacon spin in the night.

The Hiss found him eventually. It always did.

Cornered at the top, he dove. Following the dream logic deeper. Driven from the Lighthouse out of fear, hoping to get help from a friendly face.

He doesn’t know what to think anymore. He digs his toes into the grit of the sand, the ground cracked and sapped of any water it ever had.

That was the Hiss incantation. And Alan admitted to writing it.

Was he telling the truth, about the rules? About not knowing who Dylan is?

Maybe he’ll write him some help.

Maybe.

Not now. Not after what he just did. Lashing out. Ruining another chance again. Just like before. He’s so sure Alan won’t want to see him again, if he can ever find him again.

What if Alan wrote it? Is the Hiss… listening to him? Following the story?

Dylan doesn’t know the rules. There’s too much to consider to get a clear answer. He needs more information, more time. He needs to keep moving.

The desert is a shifting place, but he keeps his grip as best he can. He watches the wall of red twist on the horizon a bit longer, then turns back toward the lights and buildings. The lonely neon blinks at him. He starts walking for the neon signs, and a distant, derelict set of buildings come into view. Hills begin to rise up around him, covered in dry shrubs and brushy grass. Something that might’ve been an observatory once twinkles in the distance. An oil drill peaks up over the edge of a hill. 

This place feels wrong. Like two places melted together— a dream location, an attempt to stitch together two things and filling in the gaps with scattered, half-awake perceptions.

He can hear the hissing getting closer on the horizon.

He peers up at the sky looking for the moon, or a guiding star, but an unfamiliar sky twinkles back multitudes.

He sets his eyes on the lone neon sign ahead of him and sets his jaw.

Alan keeps fighting. So he’ll keep fighting. He’ll keep moving.

Keep his head.

Time to keep running.

**Author's Note:**

> very big thank you to bunny for supporting me as I lose my mind trying to write things and pitch stuff to you and bioluminescence for helping me make whatever filters out of my brain actually make sense :')


End file.
